photograph courtesy of violinsoldier

You shouldn’t visit Salzburg without paying homage to Mozart, one of the figures responsible for making the city so attractive to tourists in the first place. What better way to pay homage than to stomp around Mozart’s house of birth, or Geburtshaus, the place where the child genius uttered his first gurgle?

But, for the love of God, what is up with the postmodern museum devoted to the man?

Okay, the little violin from Mozart’s childhood sure is cute, but what can explain the stuffed bunny inexplicably surrounded by a clear cube of psychedelic floral wrapping paper? And then there’s that Mozart doll reclining in that bed, as the literature puts it, “suspended between birth and death, youth and old age.” Say what, Geburtshaus?

It’s jarring to place Mozart in a postmodern context; while this may be the point of the museum, it left us feeling freaked out.